Forget about it: How the gangster genre got whacked

As the years go on, the Mafia movie genre gets less popular.

Much like Jimmy Hoffa, movies and TV shows about the Italian-American Mafia have slowly vanished. Known by many names — the Mob, La Cosa Nostra or just organized crime —the Italian-American Mafia has long occupied a specific place in American pop culture. From “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas” to “The Sopranos,” stories of bosses and made men have become some of the most iconic and famous pieces of media in American history.

Yet, somewhere along the way, Hollywood has seemingly lost its appetite for Mafia stories. While the crime drama continues to thrive, there’s an apparent lack of new stories about the Mafia.

Mafia movies gave audiences a glimpse of a world most Americans would never be a part of. A world where men could rise from poverty to live a life of luxury. In many ways, it represented a twisted version of the American Dream, in that Italian immigrants could rise to the top through extortion and intimidation instead of hard work and determination.

The made men we see on screen are what many people wish they could be like: tough, resilient and never backing down to anyone. Through movies like “The Godfather” and “Scarface,” people got to see others living dream lives. While many people would love to be rich and powerful, there aren’t many who would be willing to cross the line of murder.

This ties into the idea of romanticization in media. Much like pirates, cowboys and vampires, the Mafia was heavily romanticized. Movies like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas” show the audience the high life, and while they touch upon the dark side, the romanticized version of the Mafia obscures reality. They show glittering suits, fancy cars and extravagant mansions, but not always the human cost of it all, from deaths to exploitation.

In many ways, the Mafia genre has gone the way of the Western. Once the cornerstone of American pop culture, Western movies romanticized life on the frontier with cowboys saving damsels from outlaws and bringing justice to the frontier. But as time went on, the genre lost its grip on Hollywood, and now Westerns are just something your parents or grandparents watch on a random channel on TV.

Mafia movies have followed a similar path, slowly falling out of favor as public interest shifted towards other topics. But why?

If you ask a group of people what the greatest movie ever made is, there’s no doubt that at least one person will say “The Godfather.” If you ask what the greatest TV show ever made is, a common answer will be “The Sopranos.” For many people, the genre has already peaked. So, if a young and aspiring director wants to make it big in Hollywood, why would they try to make a Mafia movie when they have to go against these titans of pop culture?

Another reason is that compared to the mid-20th century, there are far fewer Italian-American communities in modern-day America. Back then, cities like New York and Chicago housed densely populated Italian-American communities. According to NBC, the shrinking of Italian-American communities really happened in the latter half of the 20th century as more immigrants came from places like China and Vietnam and needed cheap places to live. 

Because Italian-Americans had been there for decades at that point, many were able to move into other neighborhoods, leaving space for other immigrant groups to move in. In addition, “little Italy” communities began to shrink because of gentrification. Italian-American culture remains alive, but without these concentrated areas, the inspiration for Mafia movies is far less central to most Americans.

In 1970, this began to change. With the passage of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the federal government began to crack down on the Mafia after years of feigning ignorance or outright working with them during World War II. Through the RICO Act, they were able to punish the entire criminal organization instead of specific individuals. Bosses could be arrested for the crimes of their soldiers and would almost always get the most severe punishment.

High-ranking mobsters realized they would likely die in prison if they got caught. Due to this, many of them effectively started their own gossip column and became top informants for the FBI. RICO forced the Mafia to collapse in on itself.

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The ultimate irony of La Cosa Nostra was made clear: Organizations built upon loyalty and trust were full of guys looking out for themself. RICO didn’t change these men; it revealed who they were at their core, guys who, when push came to shove, cared about themselves above all else.

Nowadays, the Mafia is still around, but nowhere near as powerful as they used to be. According to BCC, their crimes are mostly white-collar and involve as little violence as possible.

As the Mafia declined, so did their cultural relevance. When La Cosa Nostra held power over key American cities, they were a natural subject for movies. But that landscape is gone. As high-profile arrests and trials like that of Gambino boss John Gotti happened, the mystique slowly faded. People were given a closer look into the world they saw on screens for decades prior.

Then, in the late 90s, HBO’s “The Sopranos” first aired and stripped away even more of that mystique. It heavily criticized the romanticized versions of the Mafia by showing each made man as a horrible, despicable person. In 2019, famed mob movie director Martin Scorsese released “The Irishman,” which some call the last great piece of Mafia media. We still get an occasional show or movie about the Italian-American Mafia, but it has largely been replaced by media about cartels, like “Breaking Bad,” or serial killers like “Dahmer.”

The gangster genre isn’t gone completely, but much like the real-life Mafia, it is a shell of its former self. The wiseguys are gone, the neighborhood dissolved and the public’s eyes turned elsewhere. Now, the dominant genre in theaters is the superhero genre. Instead of audiences lining up to see Italian-American actors smoking cigars and wearing suits, they line up to see actors don CGI costumes and fight villains. Maybe in a decade or two, we’ll see another cultural shift and someone will write an article about why superhero media fell out of favor.